Rothman, Adam 1971–

PERSONAL: Born 1971. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1993; Columbia University, Ph.D., 2000.

ADDRESSES: Home—Washington, DC. Office—Intercultural Center 600, 3700 O St. NW, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057-1035. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Georgetown University, Washington, DC, assistant professor of history.

AWARDS, HONORS: Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by Graduate Students, Columbia University, 1998; ACLS/Oscar Handlin fellowship, 2002–03.

WRITINGS:

Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Washington History, and Perspectives. editor of nineteenth-century North America section for online history resource History Compass.

SIDELIGHTS: Adam Rothman is a scholar who is interested in the history of slavery and the ways in which the United States related to the rest of the world during the nineteenth century. His first book, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South addresses many of the themes he first explored in his doctoral thesis. Here he attempts to answer the question of why slavery expanded when it did and why is took such a strong hold in the deep southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, which joined the nation as a result of the Louisiana Purchase. A contributor to Publishers Weekly remarked that "rarely is an author's first book so mature in its balance and authority." Mark Guglielmo, in a review for the Claremont Institute Web site, called the book "an informative and highly readable account of slavery's role in the American settlements of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi before 1820. It vividly portrays the costs of slavery—for the slaves, for the native Americans, and for the slaveholders."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, January 10, 2005, review of Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South, p. 45.

ONLINE

Claremont Institute Web site, http://www.claremont.org/ (November 30, 2005), Mark Guglielmo, "Adam Rothman."

Georgetown University Web site, http://www.georgetown.edu/ (November 30, 2005), "Adam Rothman."

History Compass, http://www.history-compass.com/ (November 30, 2005), "Adam Rothman."